IEEE-USA applauds the Senate Commerce Committee for moving the Endless Frontier Act (EFA) forward. The act is a visionary new approach to research and economic development that will strengthen America’s long-term competitiveness. However, IEEE-USA disappointed that the committee significantly scaled back the financial commitment in this vital bill. IEEE-USA looks forward to working with Sens. Schumer & Young and Reps. Khanna & Gallagher to restore full funding to the bill while protecting its other equally valuable provisions.
The EFA utilizes one of America’s greatest strengths – technological innovation – to stimulate economic growth across our country and workforce. Focusing on ten broad areas of research, the bill invests in universities and national labs to produce the ideas and insights necessary to fuel a technology-centric economy.
But the EFA is much more than just a research bill. Ideas are important, but to realize the full value of innovation, those ideas must become products, companies, and industries. The EFA recognizes this by creating and expanding America’s technology transfer infrastructure to move ideas developed in universities into the marketplace quickly, and by insisting that this new infrastructure be built all across the country, not just in areas that are already global leaders in innovation.
Crucially, the EFA will invest in American workers across the technology spectrum, developing their specialized skills through grants and scholarships. America’s technology-based economy needs all types of skilled professionals, and the EFA will make sure that we have them. In doing so, the EFA will ensure that the benefits of American innovation are spread widely across the country and deeply across the American workforce.
“The Endless Frontier Act recognizes that America’s technological and national security are tightly linked to our economic competitiveness,” said Will Robinson, 2021 Vice President of Government Relations, IEEE-USA. “Investments in research and technology transfer are among the most effective and important economic development tools we have as a nation, and the EFA is a welcome step in the right direction.”
The full text of the Endless Frontier Act can be found here.
